“My mother told me that me and my brother were conceived on a night when the moon was split in half. One half being pearly white and the other a blood red. I’m not sure if this was true or not but I think it was my mother trying to be witty, making a literary play on my twin brother and I being half human and half vampire. She was always doing thing like that. Playing with words with an added tinge of dark humor. However for us two brothers, it unfortunately became a foreboding prophecy of the eventual split between us twin half bloods.”

… … … … … …

… … … … … …

A mother’s voice gently called out to two little ones. “Haagenti, Halphas. Come to bed you two.”

The two boys who looked so very much alike, with soft pale skin and dark red eyes, climbed up on the bed. “Tell us a bedtime story, mommy!” the twins pleaded in unison.

The mother was already prepared for this, holding a thick and golden embroidered book behind her back. When she revealed it to the two their eyes lit up like four small ruby crystals and they naturally smiled. They laid back into bed and the mother pulled the blanket over their tiny childlike bodies.

“What should I read to you tonight?...I’ve already read “The Sun’s Friend” and “A Night with a Dragon”...Oh! How about this one.” she said as she flipped through the pages, stopping somewhere in the middle of the book.

“Once upon a time there was a small town that didn’t have much. There were farmers who tilled the wheat fields, woman who worked the stoves and looms and little children who played with sticks and rocks.”

“But the one notable thing the small town had was a well. A wishing well.”

“What made this wishing well special was that anyone who made a wish at the well would have their wish come true. People from all over came to the wishing well and would throw in a coin to make a wish.”

“It didn’t matter how many or what kind of coins you threw into the well, your wish would come true. But the there was one rule that you had to follow if you wanted your wish to come true. You had to say your wish out loud while throwing a coin into the well.”

“A little boy from a neighboring village came to the wishing well. His grandmother was very sick and his family couldn’t afford to pay a healer to come and heal her. So he came with all the money he had, a single iron coin, to wish for his grandmother to get better.”

“He walked up to the well, threw his iron coin into the well and made his wish and started to walk back to his village to see if his grandmother was healed. But he didn’t say it out loud.”

“What he didn’t know is that if you don’t say your wish out loud, then you will be cursed. Whatever you wished for would be fated to never come true.”

“So what happened to his grandmother?” Haagenti asked worriedly.

“Her sickness got worse and she died by the next month.” the mother bluntly said.

“That’s not a happy ending! Stories should have happy endings!” Halphas protested.

“Not all stories have a happy ending. Sometimes it’s a sad one.”

Haagenti and Halphas looked down, crestfallen.

The mother patted her two kids heads and said in a calming voice, “But the end of a story doesn’t always mean the end. There always can be a sequel. It just depends on who’s telling the story.”

“Tell us a sequel then, one with a happy ending.” Haagenti said with a sense of entitlement.

“I’m not very good at making up stories with happy endings, but I can try.”

And so the mother continued the story, borrowing from other stories and telling a fantastical story about the boy and his adventures. The story continued on about how the boy first became depressed when his grandmother died but he eventually becomes determined. Determined to be able to cure any ailment and do so without charging any money. So that when there’s another poor boy who couldn’t afford the healer for his sick grandmother, he doesn’t have to watch her helplessly coughing and then slowly die. The boy went a journey, tempering himself in the wild and learning about various medicinal herbs and how they interacted with each other. He became a self-taught healer at the young age of twenty and traveled the lands healing anyone who was sick to the best of his ability.

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

The mother’s story started to twist down a darker path again, where the young healer failed a few times and actually ended up unintentionally killing people but by that time, the two boys were asleep. They were satisfied with the “good ending” that the mother made up. She looked at her boys and sighed to herself.

“I hope, that unlike me, you boys will have a happy ending of your own one day.”

She finished tucking the two boys into bed and went to her room in the small villa that was their home and prison.

From a distance a young man, dressed in noble clothing with golden threaded patterns stitched into it, stared from his window at the villa where the mother and her two boys were. Across from him and lying in a day chair was an older man who was in his fifties. The young man watched as the final candle was put out in the upper floor window to the north of the villa.

“You shouldn’t be doting on that slave and her whore children so much, Fyodor.” the older man said while sipping a glass of golden whiskey.

“She may be a slave but those children are mine, father.” Fyodor said as he closed the drapes.

“They are a disgrace to the Somova family name.” He spat out his whiskey as he said this.

“It would be better if we locked them up in the dungeons where they couldn’t be seen or heard.”

Fyodor stopped arguing with his father and picked up a glass of whiskey as well and downed the entire thing in one gulp. He was tired. Ever since he forced himself on that slave and impregnated her, it brought him nothing but trouble. A part of him agreed with what his father was saying but a small, fatherly, part of him wanted his sons to prosper. This ambivalence had caused his family to become annoyed and discontent with him but there wasn’t much they could do. After all, Fyodor was the Patriarch of the Somova family.

“Bah, you always do this. Shutting up when you don’t know what to say.” the old man threw his half filled glass at the wall. It shattered into bits and pieces and the odor of whiskey permeated the air.

“I’ll admit that it’s sometimes a fine quality but there are times when you need to man up and take action.”

“I understand, father.” Fyodor said with a downtrodden expression.

“I didn’t let you inherit my position just so our slaves could suck us dry of our profits. You better start to shape up. I gave you this title and I can just as easily take it back.” he threatened Fyodor as he walked out.

“Sigh. What should I do?” Fyodor mused to himself as he poured himself another glass.

Tonight would be another long night of thinking and drinking. Not that the two mix well but Fyodor couldn’t do one without the other, otherwise he would find himself in an even deeper melancholy.

The mother didn’t sleep that night even though she put out all the lights. As a vampire, her vision in the night was impeccable. In some circumstances it was better than in the daylight. She was not in her room which was on the ground level of the villa. She was below it.

There wasn’t a basement, cellar or anything like that below the villa. But there was a man-made tunnel. The mother had been digging this tunnel soon after she was given the villa which was after she gave birth to the twins, Haagenti and Halphas. Once she realized she was going to be staying at the villa for a while, at least until Fyodor figured out what to do with her, she started hatching an escape plan.

It was a simple plan. First dig a tunnel that led out to the cliffside that the castle sat on. Below and to the west of the cliffside was a river that led through south, to a larger river known as the Styx River. The Styx River ran through a major portion of the human country all the way into the demon country that was south to it. If she was able to take that river and enter the demon country, she might have a chance at freedom. For herself and her boys.

She wiped the sweat off her brow, smudging dirt onto her forehead.

“Only a few hundred more feet to go.” she said, smiling to herself, and she continued to dig.